What's with the Influence Bug?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was having an influence war with the Torians. I built several influance starbases along the boarder, and fully upgraded them. When i researched a new tech allowing for another upgrade, i upgraded one starbase, and the 4 adjoining sectors jumped TO THEIR CONTROL???? Then i loaded my autosave, and now, their culture has DOUBLED! swallowing HALF my former territory! what's up with that?!?!
13,392 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Give it a few turns and see if it works itself out. This happend to me last night. I'm playing on a gigantic map, there was a news update saying that the Thalans had just conquered some minor race; when I clicked "done" on the news I noticed that the Thalans (3rd in influence at the time, about 1/4 of map) influence more than doubled and their color covered more than half the map! I decided to press on since I hadn't saved in a few turns, after about 5-6 turns the Thalans influence returned to normal.
Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
something similar happened to my economy after i took over a minor race. it spiked for 1 turn, and that turn i made about 25K in profit, but the next turn it dropped to its previous level. it made trying to track my economy for the rest of the game impossible, because that one turn made the rest of my economic history so small that it just looked like a line on the bottom of the graph.

this must have something to do with taking over a minor race; are they given extra economic and cultural bonuses to keep them from being swallowed up by the major races?
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
there aren't any miner races on the map. They weren't at war with anyone. It happened when I upgraded one of MY influence starbases. I gave it 5 turns, with no change
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
this is an invasion bug, you(or someone else) gets a trillion population after succesfull invading = huge influence shock etc, lasts one turn, then the population on the planet reduces to max planet capacity

it is annoying, i hope SD looks into this

if you get the same bug when invading with 2 transporters, try it with one only
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It's a bug sometime the influence can cover an entire map it happened to me 2 or 3 times.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
no it's not the invasion bug. I was one of the first to report that one to SD... this is different... NO WAR. NO INVASION. IT HAPPENED THE VERY EXACT MOMENT I UPGRADED MY STARBASE. AS IN NO TURN INBETWEEN. RIGHT THEN. THAT SECOND. DO YOU WANT TO UPGRADE? YES. BOOM!!! half my territory enveloped by the other guy's influence. get the idea? it happened when i upgraded the influence of one of my influence starbases!
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I had the Arceans cover the map suddenly after the Altarians surrendered to the Drengi.

I am not saying it was a bug but it was way wierd, unexplainable, shouldn't have happened and disconcerting for a player who leans to influence victory.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just think of it as a random event that didn't go your way.....you could still win you know.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The influence map isn't updated right away some of the time, but upgrading an influence starbase seems to force it to update. So, if the Torians had done something to increase their influence (mining an influence resource, changing governments, etc) and the map hadn't updated yet, upgrading your influence bases might have forced it to update the map?

That's my only idea. I've had something similar happen before, but not this extreme.

-Dewar
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
you could still win you know


Not at this particular point in the game. I had like 20 turns before they won on influence so I did not have time to respond militarily.

You are correct that I could have won with a better overall startegy. I brought the Arceans into the war with Altaria and then I let the Altarians off the hook when I could have destroyed them. The Arceans kept pounding them and while the Altarians surrender to the Drengi, the Arceans reaped the influence benefits. If I had followed through , I doubt the Arceans would have acquired so much influence.

Anyway, not a big deal just one small map game
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
They might have had the "xoneophiles" random event. This gives massive bonuses to influence, that aren't noted in the same turn unless a starbase is upgraded. That would have shown you the instant change in inf, and would explain it. I've had the event, and gone from about 40% of the galaxy to about 80%, taking over masses of planets thanks to the mind control wonder. It goes away eventually, but can take up to about 20 turns I think
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This happened to me too. Yor had two miserable planets in the corner and suddenly one turn their influence covered the whole galaxy. In a couple more turns my planets started defecting.

Unfortunately I did not save that game. I was so annoyed that I want back to the last autosave right away. After I reloaded the influence bug did not reproduce and I successfully conquered the galaxy. And only later it occured to me that I should have saved the game and sent it to SD.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This leads me to the conclusion that GNN is not reporting the whole story.
I really think we need some more info, like WAR DECLARED updates and EVENT updates that should start off
each turn, as they did back in MOO2. Half the time, I don't realize I'm at war with someone for a while. Even if you attacked them, they should come up and say "THIS MEANS WAR!"

It would be more fun that way too.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I had this same issue in the last game I played. I had about 70 % of the map under my influence and the Drath were completely under my influence. I hit next turn and there weren't any message popups or anything, but the entire map was covered by drath influence. It only lasted two or three turns but it lasted long enough to have one of my planets start to warn me about the possibility of rebellion.

In the end it was ok tho. When the bug cleared a couple of turns later, the map was about 95% under my influence

The Day is MINE Trebeck!